Dumpster Diving to Learn Why We’re Fat… um, ok
David Kessler is a Harvard-trained doctor, a lawyer, a med school dean and a former FDA commissioner. Not really the guy you’d expect to be legs up in a dumpster behind a fast-food joint.
If anyone noticed the man foraging through the trash, they would have assumed he was a vagrant. Except he was wearing black dress slacks and padded gardening gloves. “I’m surprised he didn’t wear a tie,” his wife said dryly.
But having had a lifetime battling the bulge, Kessler was on a mission to decode the ingredients used by high-profile chain restaurants. So, the dude rolled up his sleeves and flung himself head first into large bins behind places like Chili’s, all in an effort to prove they were knowingly seducing diners into eating more than needed, by using a special salt-fat-sugar combo.
Instead of satisfying hunger, the salt-fat-sugar combination will stimulate that diner’s brain to crave more, Kessler said. For many, the come-on offered by Lay’s Potato Chips — “Betcha can’t eat just one” — is scientifically accurate. And the food industry manipulates this neurological response, designing foods to induce people to eat more than they should or even want.
Ingredient labels were the loot Kessler was seeking. It provided information he thought the restaurant chains were not giving him. He knew if suppliers ship across state lines, as suppliers for Chili’s do, the ingredients must be printed on the boxes. Which was his impetus for clandestine dates with dumpsters.
Kessler is also known for his investigation of the tobacco industry and attempts to place it under federal regulation while he was FDA commissioner from 1990 to 1997, when he earned the nickname “Eliot Knessler.” He equates the tabacco and food industries. Both are manipulating consumer behavior to sell products that can harm health, he said.
David Kessler’s book is called “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatieable American Appetite” a finger-pointing account of how giant food corporations and restaurant chains are the Dr. Evils of the food world and responsible for American’s ever expanding waistlines.
At 57 years old, Kessler is now happy with his weight, but I guess he’s glad he has someone else to blame for many years of pudginess.
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Kessler investigated what common sense proved long, long before.
You don’t get skinny by eating out.
Agree with Mr. O’Hearn…While many chains are offering a choice of downsized portions, you know that none want to be known as the prototypical place where “the food is so bad…and the portions are so small!”
Another aspect that the Post piece doesn’t touch on is how the snack foods are cleverly created to make you thirsty…for alcoholic beverages liberally laced with sugar. Empty calories galore (and a huge markup for the eatery)!